foot-dragging

See also: footdragging

English

Alternative forms

• footdragging

Etymology

From drag one's feet.

Noun

foot-dragging (usually uncountable, plural foot-draggings)

1. The deliberate delaying of obligatory action.
   • 1918, Francis Lynde, Branded, page 114:

     I am glad to be able to say that common honesty, or some shadowy simulacrum of it, revived presently and sent me back to the hotel, though not without terrible foot-draggings, you may be sure.

   • 2005, Clive Archer, Norway Outside the European Union: Norway and European Integration from 1994 to 2004, page 191:

     The tactics of pace-setting, foot-dragging, least resistance or fence-sitting could be used either in the making of policy or, later, in its implementation.

   • 2008, Maryann Dickar, Corridor Cultures: Mapping Student Resistance at an Urban School, page 154:

     Once in the classroom, students also employed foot-dragging strategies to slow the transition from the hall state to the student state.

   • 2010 December 9, Ewen MacAskill, “WikiLeaks cables: China ‘fed up’ with Burma's footdragging on reforms”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     A Beijing diplomat complained China is “fed up with the footdragging” of Burma's strongman, General Than Shwe, and his inner circle, one of the cables, released by WikiLeaks, reported.

   • 2021 March 24, “Open Access: Waiting for the wires”, in RAIL, number 927, page 33:

     Given that (English) politicians are noted for foot-dragging on electrification schemes, will they use these new locomotives simply as an excuse to defer more electrification schemes?

Synonyms

• slowball
• slow-walking (from slow-walk)

See also

• delaying tactic

References

• “foot-dragging”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.